Review: Club Car Restaurant and Lounge (2.5 stars out of 5 — Tolerable to worth a visit)

The Coal Car rib-eye ($28.50).

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Sitting in a booth at the Club Car — a train-themed restaurant in Clive — it was easy to imag­ine riding in the buffet lounge of one of the grand passenger trains of yester­year, smoke billowing by a window, wheels clickity clacking on the tracks, port­ers scurrying to and fro.

Of course, the porters are actually waiters and the rhythmic clacking is from forks and knives on plates and the chatter of custom­ers’ conversations.

The Club Car is a popular place and by 7 p.m. on a Friday or Saturday night, you can expect to wait for a table. This kind of popular­ity seemed remarkable to me at first because the menu is somewhat unre­mark­able.

Appetizers can be awk­ward, like the puzzling bacon-wrapped BBQ shrimp skewer ($9.95) I ordered that was weirdly presented on a not unsubstantial pile of rice pilaf. Since appetiz­ers are meant to be bites and nibbles, what was the rationale for including the rice, I wondered?

Sandwiches and burgers were better. I enjoyed a satisfactory Philly steak sandwich ($9.95), which in addition to seared steak, onions, and melted Jack cheese, was further embellished with bell peppers, mushrooms and a bowl of au jus for dunking.

A Caboose burger ($8.75) was also good. It came loaded with cooked onions, Swiss cheese, American cheese and ranch dressing. Traditional fixings, such as tomato, are not included but you can request them for no additional charge.

In the main dish cate­gory, I sampled the Ruby trout ($16.95), which was simply prepared with a colorful rub of sun-dried tomato and herbs, and the Coal Car rib-eye ($28.50), so called because it’s black­ened. The steak and fish were well-cooked and tasted fine, but lost some of their pizzazz thanks to the revel­ation from a waiter that the rubs on both entrees came not from a chef’s bag of tricks but rather from the supermarket.

In fact, many items at the Club Car — rubs, salad dressings, the bread, the battered fries, most of the desserts — are from a box or bag rather than made from scratch. For the price, I would have expected most, if not all, of these things to be house-made.

Like I said, the food’s decidedly middle-of-the-track. But there’s more at play here, like the fact that service is fairly quick even when every table in the house is full or that co-owner Dave Tasler person­ally greats every guest at the door or the coziness of the dining room, which I found to be relaxing and comfortable. And then there’s my favorite touch, the red neon sign outside that announces “immed­iate seating” when there is no wait.

The Club Car might not be the bullet train of restaurants, but it’s worth a visit if you’re OK with everyday food and interested in supporting a local business. Or, if you’re simply nuts about trains.